New for 2011

My poor, poor blog, neglected all these busy school months. For the new year, I resolve to post more often and get back into the swing of being a blogger. To start off on the right foot, I've just added a ton of new posts for many of the books I've read since August. Most of my reading has been class and book group related; sadly I've had little time to read for my own edification. Luckily, though, the majority of the books I've been forced to read have been winners.

Please enjoy the new blog posts and new look as we head into a brand spankin' new year!

Rae

Book Review: Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
(*****)

Never Let Me Go follows three students from a school that isn't what it seems with a future that's bleaker than what it first appears.

It's hard to say anything about this book without a major spoiler alert, and I don't want to give anything away. I will say this, though, Never Let Me Go wasn't to my taste, but it was a good book. Heartbreaking and a dark look at what our future may hold, but good. It's a great choice for a book group - it offers many topics for discussion. And while it's an adult novel, it would be an interesting book for a high school audience, too.

Book Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
by E. Lockhart
(*****)

From Goodreads:
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.

From Me:
I loved this book! It was clever and fun, and the characters, though few could relate to their wealth and boarding school experiences, were relatable. Most of the story centered around the awkwardness of growing up, young love, and wanting to fit in, allowing the reader to say "this story is about a girl [or boy] like me."

I think Frankie, despite her poor choices in boyfriends, is someone to look up to. She saw everyone following the status quo and she didn't like it, so she did something about it. I can see Frankie breaking all kinds of glass ceilings in her future.

I also loved the descriptions of the panopticon and the neglected positives. I love words and word play so I really enjoyed the neglected positive sections; I'd never heard of the panopticon idea, but it makes complete sense and feels very 1984/Big Brother. But my favorite part is how Frankie takes on the all-male secret society, and with it, she takes on old conventions and perceived gender roles. Frankie rocks!

Book Review: Frindle

Frindle
by Andrew Clements
illustrations by Brian Selznick
(*****)

** Spoiler Alert **

I love bengoes and bengo-play. And the idea that a young boy, no matter his intentions, created a brand new bengo and that it became so popular that it was eventually added to the dictionary is fantastic. Nick may have come up with the idea to change the bengo for "pen" in an effort to make another move in the chess game he and Mrs. Granger were playing, but I think he really understood the lesson that she was teaching him. He may have decided to waste the class time by making a super-...moreI love bengoes and bengo-play. And the idea that a young boy, no matter his intentions, created a brand new bengo and that it became so popular that it was eventually added to the dictionary is fantastic. Nick may have come up with the idea to change the bengo for "pen" in an effort to make another move in the chess game he and Mrs. Granger were playing, but I think he really understood the lesson that she was teaching him. He may have decided to waste the class time by making a super-long report, but the report was full of good information and he did learn a lot in the process. In the same way, when he created his new bengo, he was taking to heart Mrs. Granger's answer to his question about who creates bengoes: "You do, Nicholas. You and me and everyone in this class and this school and this town and this state and this country...We decide what goes in [the dictionary]" (29-31). Mrs. Granger was passionate about bengoes, and in her creative way, she got her students to be passionate about them too, particularly Nick.

Children can identify with Nick and his issues with school and teachers: not wanting to do homework and being concerned about a tough new teacher. They could also be drawn in by the humor of Nick's clever pranks. But once in, the story provides pretty cool lesson about the power of bengoes and that someone as young as Nick can make a difference, even one as big as creating a brand new bengo. This book is a fun, humorous book that will draw in a reader by a normal, relatable kid and the amazing, but not too impossible, thing he did.

Bengo = Word. Pass it on!

Book Review: Leviathan

Leviathan
by Scott Westerfeld
illustrations by Keith Thompson
(*****)


From Goodreads:
Prince Aleksander, would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battletorn war machine and a loyal crew of men.

Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way…taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.

From me:
While Leviathan may be hard to categorize, it's a great example of a different type of science fiction - one that doesn't meet anyone's definition. Westerfeld's creation is strange and wondrous while being filled with war and danger. Deryn, the middy hiding her gender, doesn't let her deception hinder her (or her storyline); she takes risks with her get-it-done attitude, but she does so intelligently, making her one of the best crewmen on the Leviathan. Alek is a prince who has been looked down on most of his life, makes many blunders, and has little confidence, and yet he proves to be both skilled and able with a heart for people. These outside-the-box characters fit excellently with an outside-the-box story.

Audio Book Review: The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)

The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)
by Rick Riordan

Audio CD, unabridged, read by Kevin R. Free and Katherine Kellgren
(*****)

From Goodreads:
Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane.

One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a "research experiment" at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.

Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them —Set— has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe - a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.
From me:
The Kane Chronicles are a new series by the author of the Percy Jackson books. And by new, I mean different - this book is a couple of years old now, but the series is not connected to the Percy books (at least to my knowledge). Where the Olympians series focuses on figures from Greek mythology, the Kane titles feature the Egyptian gods. One of my favorite parts of this book was how Riordan made history interesting.

Riordan did an excellent job of creating a world that was exciting and fun. It really lends itself to the audio format, as the main characters switch back and forth with the narration as though they're making a recording for future listeners (that, and Kevin R. Price and Katherine Kellgren did an amazing job voicing the narration). The reader/listener is drawn in by the adventure and mystery, but the story is also kept light by the teasing asides between Sadie and Carter as they're narrating. I like how Riordan kept this good-versus-evil, save-the-world tale more fun than scary. The reader also gets drawn into the story as though they may be one of the children with the "blood of the pharaohs."

A great read for the prescribed age-group of grades 4-9, but I got a real kick out of it, too!

Book Review: Cheri

Cheri
by Colette
(*****)

From Goodreads:
Chéri, together with The Last of Chéri, is a classic story of a love affair between a very young man and a charming older woman. The amour between Fred Peloux, the beautiful gigolo known as Chéri, and the courtesan Léa de Lonval tenderly depicts the devotion that stems from desire, and is an honest account of the most human preoccupations of youth and middle age. With compassionate insight Colette paints a full-length double portrait using an impressionistic style all her own.
From me:
This review is only for Cheri; I haven't had a chance to read The Last of Cheri, yet. Cheri follows the end of an affair between an older courtesan with a much younger man, something that turns out to be much harder than either of them could have imagined. This story is both moving and still relevant to today, though it takes place in pre-World War I France.

This book was read for a book group and created great topics of discussion.

Graphic Novel Review: Twilight: The Graphic Novel

Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1
by Stephenie Meyer
illustrated by Young Kim
(*****)

One problem with creating a movie based on a book with extraordinarily beautiful and occasionally sparkly vampires (not to mention the uber-tall and muscled wolf-people) is that you have to cast those parts with real people. While the actors and actresses in the Twilight movie are very attractive, they they still look like regular people...with bad make-up jobs (as someone who is naturally uber-pale, I thought the face make-up used in that movie was laughable). I think the graphic novel does much better with this. To me, like the combination of imagination and the written word, the artistry of this graphic novel created the author’s world better than the movie. Young Kim also made choices that enhanced the story, like the use of color or photographic elements (the La Push beach or the wolf in Bella’s dream).

I only had two issues with the graphic novel. Despite the fact that I really loved the artistry in this book – I thought Young Kim’s illustrations were beautiful – I thought some of the characters looked a little too similar to one another; sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. The other issue is that, while I think the graphic novel did an excellent job of making sure that all of the major scenes were included, without the meat of the text, what was left behind felt a little light or weak. And to stay with the food analogy, without that meat, sometimes it felt like all that was left was cheese. That’s why I think this graphic novel does much better as an “enhancement” to the original book, rather than a stand-alone graphic novel.

Book Review: Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska
by John Green
(*****)

While this book wasn't to my taste, I do believe it has quality and literary merit. The writing quality was strong, including the occasional sentence that made me pause to appreciate the words. The characters were well developed, the countdown kept the reader intrigued and pushing through to see what happened on The Day, and the overall plot was poignant and meaningful.

I wasn't particularly fond of the first half of this book. Reading about how these teens were living their lives, or rather, wasting them, bothered me. Yes, they were bonding, and perhaps they were acting as many teens do (I couldn't relate myself, but maybe that's true for others), but it felt so wasteful. And the adult in me, though only a decade or so removed from high school, did think that the smoking, drinking, etc., was inappropriate. That being said, I'm well aware that none of this material would shock the majority of today's teens, let alone influence their behavior.

After finishing the book and ruminating on the plot, I think it may have been intentional on John Green's part to make the Before section aimless - it made the second half and the teens' search for meaning that much more powerful. I think Pudge's statement at the end of the book, in his final paper, really sums up the first and second parts of the book:

"When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are...They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."


**Spoiler Alert - quit reading here if you don't want vague references to what happens in this story!**


The first half of the story, our main characters live like they're invincible, but in the end they get a taste of their own mortality. And for any teenager who has dealt with the loss of one of their friends or acquaintances, this book could potentially help them. So despite my personal feelings about this book, I think Alaska deserves to have a place in any teen's library.

Book Review: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
(*****)

From Goodreads:
After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family . . .

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

From me:
Even though the book started out dark and creepy, I felt like the story was more fantastic and adventuresome, rather than dark or scary. Throughout the book, Bod was constantly not afraid of the things that most of us would be. Ghosts are his family, a graveyard is his home - that being true, a school bully is nothing to fear. To me, I found the overall theme to be fearlessness and the importance of really living your life, which is something I need to embrace a little more often. A great read for both children and adults.